Dean Godson - Himself Alone - David Trimble and the Ordeal Of Unionism

Joel Patton, who went on to found the ‘Spirit of Drumcree’ group within the Orange Order as a vehicle for protest against what he saw as the insipidity of the leadership, says that one of the weaknesses of loyalism is that they need men on white horses: they cannot accept that Drumcree was their victory, so they alighted upon Paisley and Trimble as explanations for that success. But Patton also expresses the view which many loyalists have held since the Belfast Agreement – that the British state, and particularly elements of the British intelligence services, wanted to give Trimble such a victory in order to build up an apparently ‘hardline’ Unionist who would then have the credibility to effect an historic compromise with Irish nationalism. 51 In Trimble’s eyes Patton’s views are just another example of loyalist conspiracy theories. ‘Many of these anti-Agreement Unionists decided after the Belfast Agreement of 1998 that I was a bad ’un and therefore had to have been a bad ’un all of the time,’ responds Trimble. ‘These anti-Agreement Unionists have a problem. They have to avoid the lurking doubt that I might still have good reasons as a Unionist for what I am doing post-1998. If I was a good ’un in 1995, how can I have been a bad ’un? People like simplicity and they have difficulty in coping with the complexity of political life.’ 52

What is certain, both during Drumcree 1995 and 1996, is that the British politicians, including the Prime Minister, were taken by surprise. 53 The point is confirmed by Sir Robin Butler, the then Cabinet Secretary, who recalls that ‘there were problems with marches the whole time and to us, it seemed as though all the protagonists were like a child crying wolf’. According to Butler, Major’s attitude was to ask whether ‘it was reasonable that the loyalists be so insistent about marching down this piece of road’. 54 Indeed, after the second ‘Siege’ of Drumcree, Mayhew told Paul Bew that ‘no one told me what would happen’. By this, Mayhew did not mean that he was totally ignorant of the fact that some sort of trouble was brewing, simply that it was possible that many of those Unionists who were telling him that such crises would occur may have had a vested interest in hyping them up to secure the result they wanted (such as Trimble himself). Some of those within the NIO who were meant to provide advice on what would actually happen may not have done so with sufficient vigour: when he subsquently raised Mayhew’s concerns with a senior civil servant, Bew was told by the official that it was not his role to provide this sort of ‘tribal advice’. As the official saw it, the best traditions of the British mandarinate were those of impartiality. Bew also derived the impression that after the AIA it became perceived career death amongst some officials to state the ‘Unionist line’; and in any case, everyone had seen the Protestants faced down before, as in 1985–6, and may simply have assumed it would happen again. 55 Peter Bell, then British joint secretary of the Anglo-Irish Secretariat, recalls that at this point, Drumcree was seen as a public order issue. It was therefore primarily a problem for the RUC and the Army (from which the Government could and arguably should stand back) rather than as an issue of the first political magnitude. This perhaps reflected an enduring lack of empathy for Unionist concerns on the part of many NIO officials from outside the Province and a reluctance on the part of some local civil servants to speak out lest they be thought of as ‘sectarian’. 56 Speaking to loyalists on 12 July 1996, Trimble offered his own interpretation why the state was blind-sided during successive years’ disturbances. He said this was because the leading intelligence operatives had all perished in the RAF Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre in August 1994. Had they lived, Trimble opined, it is unlikely that they would have failed to see the loyalist protests coming. 57 Again, this is pure speculation – and in any case, grievous as the losses were, men such as John Deverell (the senior MI5 officer in Northern Ireland) would have been retired by the time of Drumcree 1995. As with the disaster over the Frameworks Documents, the likeliest explanation is that the state as a whole was so focused on republican intentions during the first IRA ceasefire that they became tone deaf to sensibilities on the loyalist side. If so, Trimble was again the unexpected beneficiary of a Government cock-up – although he denies that Drumcree had much to do with his subsequent election as leader. Justly or unjustly, though, it was the benchmark by which much of the world, and his own community, judged his subsequent performance.

AFTER a year of set-backs, James Molyneaux finally resigned as UUP leader on 28 August 1995 – the day after his 75th birthday. Trimble says he was surprised by the timing of the departure, of which he had received no advanced warning (in contrast to Major, who was notified by Molyneaux some two weeks before). 1 Indeed, John Hunter remembers Trimble dismissing the notion of a Molyneaux resignation when he raised the subject shortly beforehand at a barbecue given at the home of Drew Nelson, a leading Co. Down Orangeman. But when the news came, Trimble rang Hunter and said, ‘well, you’ll be happy this morning, the sun is shining’. Trimble knew that Hunter was a staunch opponent of Molyneaux, but insisted he had made no definite decisions himself. 2 However, Daphne Trimble recalls her husband saying that if he did run, he would win. 3 By contrast, the man who definitely thought that the sun was shining that morning was John Taylor. Trimble knew that the Strangford MP would seek the leadership, nor was he entirely averse to the prospect of a Taylor victory, since he was sure he would become his right-hand man. 4 Much of the political class agreed with this analysis. Thus, Jack Allen recalls that much as John Taylor was disliked by some, the majority of the party officers thought he would win – with or without Trimble in the race. 5 The NIO agreed: according to Sir John Wheeler, the security minister, Ancram’s senior officials wanted Taylor precisely because he was seen as a good ‘deal-maker’. 6

Trimble soon weighed the pros and cons of running. His plus points, as he saw them, were that he was articulate, could hold his own on television, and because over the previous year he had distanced himself ‘slightly’ from the Frameworks proposals. He reckoned these points would weigh heavily with the UUP’s unique electoral college, despite the fact that he was the youngest and most junior of the UUP MPs and was without formal standing within the Loyal Orders (beyond the reputation which he had acquired at Drumcree). If the choice had been up to the populace at large, Maginnis would be the victor. He enjoyed a good reputation amongst Unionists on security issues – the ex-UDR Major had been the intended victim of at least a dozen assassination attempts – but without compromising his non-sectarian credentials (as was evidenced by his success in holding the constituency of Fermanagh-South Tyrone, with its narrow Roman Catholic majority, in successive Westminster elections). And thanks to his personable manner, he was able to communicate on southern Irish television in a way that few other Unionists could match. Indeed many Unionists believed that he was far too willing to treat with the South, as exemplified by what they saw as his excessive generosity in the Strand II ‘basket’ of the 1991–2 talks in Dublin. If it were up to the MPs, Ross was reckoned to be the likely winner; and if it were up to the councillors and the business community, Taylor seemed to be favourite. But none of these groups formed the electoral college. Because the decision would be made by the Ulster Unionist Council, an 860-strong body with representatives from all of the then seventeen constituencies and other affiliated bodies such as the Orange Order and the Young Unionists, Trimble might stand a chance. The UUC was, he then reasoned, full of people with a greater knowledge than the man in the street, but was at the same time possessed in his eyes of a detachment which the full-time MPs and councillors did not have. In so far as there was an Orange constituency – and it was wider than just the Order’s own delegates, since ordinary branch representatives might also be individual members – Trimble calculated that he had it sewn up. This, he maintains passionately, was not because of Drumcree but because of his work for the Ulster Society. His doubts were, therefore, not about his viability as a candidate, but whether he actually wanted the position itself at this juncture. He knew that it would be an uphill struggle to accomplish anything and, in any case, 1995 was scarcely the best year to become UUP leader after the debacle of the Frameworks Documents. 7